by Peter Corris
“How’s Bettina?” I said.
She let it go. “If you would be good enough to leave the young man and I alone? Mrs. McMahon will see to the arrangements.”
He was sitting on the edge of a silk upholstered chair taking an intelligent interest in the paintings. He gave me one of his winning athlete’s smiles and then looked away. For all his smooth appearance he still looked like trouble and it’d be her trouble and the thought came to me that he might be vengeance for all those small, frightened men the Judge had bullied in the dock. It wasn’t a bad thought and I took it out of the room with me.
Mrs. McMahon was waiting outside and we walked amiably along to the office. She handed over the cheque with a motherly smile. I looked at it. Five thousand dollars.
“A lot of money,” I said. “Can she afford it?”
“I believe you’ve earned it. She can just afford it. There will have to be economies.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
“Yes, she trusts me and I trust her.”
“Don’t,” I said. “She’ll wipe her feet on your face if he tells her to.”
I left the house and walked down the path to my car. The lawn was ragged and weeds dominated the flower beds. I looked around but there was no sign of Rusty.
I paid the cheque in, drew out five hundred dollars and mailed it to Honey Gully. Then I packed a bag and headed for Canberra. My first call was at Kay’s flat; it seemed to be occupied—no milk bottles or papers lying about, clean windows. My mouth felt dry and I felt flushed and edgy when I walked into the reporters’ room at The Canberra Times. Kay was sitting behind a desk, hammering a typewriter. She had a pencil stuck in her mouth and her concentration was total. I watched her for a minute and then she shook her hair back and looked up; her eyes went wide and the pencil dropped. She caught it deftly and put it down on the desk as I walked over.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi Cliff.”
“Busy?”
“Mmm, fairly.”
“What’s the story?”
“You know, dirty Indonesian money and how to clean it.”
“You were supposed to clear that with me.”
“You were supposed to ring me.”
“I got tied up, Kay,” I smiled. “I mean that literally, I called as soon as I could.”
“Well, it didn’t matter. I started work on this straight away. The paper sent me to Indonesia. Just got back.”
“Yeah, I heard. Terrific tan.” It was true, she was wearing a green dress with white trim; her tan was TV commercial standard and she looked cool, clean, and lovely. I was trying to hold my feelings in neutral but they wouldn’t stay there. I wanted to touch her very badly. She moved her hand across the desk a little towards me, it was like a negotiating party advancing under a white flag. I reached down and put my hand lightly over hers.
“Let’s go out for a drink,” I said.
“I thought you’d say that.”
We went back to the downstairs place of course and talked and drank there for a couple of hours. She had the goods on Keir Baudin all right and I had no reason to stop her exposing him, even if I could. I felt a bit sorry for the old man, though. I told her how the Chatterton case had developed and she expressed a polite interest. The fact was that she was committed to her story and the career advance it was probably going to bring her. I struggled with the knowledge that she didn’t need me.
“You look better,” she said, “fitter, and you’re not smoking. You’ll be better at the job.”
“Yeah, we’ll both be better at our jobs.”
She went back to work and we met again later. We ate, drank, and made love, and she went on with her work. I stayed in the flat and read her books and walked around Canberra seeing how the taxpayers’ money was spent. The city’s grass and gardens were drying out and would soon be yellow under the summer sun. After a few days I had a strong yen for a beach and I tried to persuade Kay to come to the coast with me but she was too involved in her story. We spent an evening together in which we couldn’t find any common ground. Truth was, I was in Sydney and she was in Indonesia and we both knew it. I went back to Sydney to wait for work. Her articles on the Indonesian connection were run in all the capital city papers; the next time I saw her name in print she was writing about crime and politics—in New York City.
